The subject matter disclosed herein relates to a detent alignment mechanism assembly and, more particularly, to a detent alignment mechanism assembly for a control stick of a vehicle, such as an aircraft.
Aircraft, such as helicopters or rotary wing aircrafts, are often controlled by a pilot who inputs control commands using various control sticks and levers provided in the aircraft cockpit. The control sticks include, for example, a collective stick and an elevator control stick. The collective stick can be used to collectively increase or decrease rotor blade pitch to thereby increase or decrease thrust generated by the main rotor assembly during flight operations. The elevator control stick can be used to manipulate the orientation of elevator surfaces, such as horizontal stabilizers and ailerons, to provide for increased or decreased control during flight operations.
The control sticks are often movable in forward and reverse directions. In the case of the elevator control stick, the movement is achieved by the pilot grabbing a handle and pulling up on a lift mechanism to effectively unlock the elevator control stick. At this point, the pilot pivots the elevator control stick about a pivot axis to correspondingly cause an elevator surface on the aircraft to move or pivot. Once the pivoting or movement of the elevator surface is completed, the pilot releases the lift mechanism and locks the elevator control stick in place.
A frequent problem with the control sticks is that they are each provided with certain predefined pivot positions or detents. The detents are established by a pin-tooth assembly that associates particular elevator surface positions with particular pin-tooth registration positions. As such, the detents insure that the control sticks can only set certain flight conditions. However, since the detents do not provide any tactile feedback to the pilot when the pilot pulls up on the lift mechanism of an elevator control stick in particular and begins moving or pivoting the elevator control stick about the pivot axis, the pilot has no way of knowing where the elevator control stick is relative to a given one of the detents. This can be confusing or distracting to the pilots and can affect their ability to properly operate their aircraft.